Okay, this is pretty cool.

from JoeUser Forums

image First, I’d like to apologize as we had promised that the betas would suck until Beta 3.  Oh, they still suck. But because we need to get this feature in earlier than later, something fairly cool is getting in early.  I will say that we will make an effort to avoid any cool features getting in early in the future.

So in today’s beta update, players can design their own units.  But in Elemental, units are represented by cards from a UI point of view.  To make this a useful feature and not just cosmetic, players can design their cards.  The reason this is useful is because players can change the background and pose of the unit. As a result, we can shrink the cards down very small in the UI where we need and players will still know what they represent because they were the ones who designed them.

To see it in action click here:

http://screencast.com/t/zgacEgNmRwMq

116,798 views 30 replies
Reply #2 from Demigod Forums Top

Magic the Gathering: Elemental

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Dude looks good! I get my pc back tomorrow and will be beta testing again.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Very cool ! I begin to see how I will be able to make my sovereign's Black Company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Company) :-)

 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Okay, that's just cool. :frogboy:

Reply #6 from Demigod Forums Top

grr, this ain't what i signed up for.

at least tell me it flickers randomly or something!?

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

As long as it still randomly formats my harddrive, I can tolerate this feature.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Oo that's really cool. It'll help make units feel more "our own" too, allowing us to give them backgrounds/poses that we imagine being relevant!

I never thought about being able to customize the graphics in this manner making them more recognizable to us because we designed them (at least, it'll make our own troops easily recognizable, not sure about the AI or other human players). Very sneaky.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Frogboy! HOW DARE YOU!!! You are done! Finished! You'll never work in this town again! My lawyers will be calling you! I'm filing a suit for breach of contract! This! This is COMPLETELY unacceptable!

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Hmm, just the thing for my dramatically posed, confident, rightiously couragous peasant levvies. (you're in dragon bait company now, soldier!)

Also with a quietly professional pose for the armoured/equipped guys I actually care about.}:)

 

 

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

A couple other neat things about this:

+ You can flip the background using the mirror icon button above the background list.

+ The pose you choose on the card will be the pose that the unit takes on the map when you are in cloth map mode.   This gives you another way to make your own units unique and easily identifiable on the map.

 

 

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

The pose you choose on the card will be the pose that the unit takes on the map when you are in cloth map mode. This gives you another way to make your own units unique and easily identifiable on the map.

Heh, i was just about to ask this question concerning poses on the cloth map. 

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

underwear change on aisle 3! Totally awesome!

And for those that suggest because the game has INFORMATION CARDS it makes the game Magic: The Gathering...

:P  :thumbsdown: :annoyed: :rolleyes:

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

Ooh, that looks like it will be fun.

So what is the catch then? Does it cause bad disk write sectors?

Reply #15 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting Polynomial, reply 2
Magic the Gathering: Elemental

QFT

Elemental: War on Magic always makes me think of MtG. I keep thinking that they are declaring war on the MtG franchise.

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm having a nerdgasm.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

Totally awesome. Now give us the ability to Mod in our own backgrounds. :)

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

@raven X :   look in the elemental folder, under "GFX" then "backgrounds"   you'll find some PNG files, ready to be modded.   (It looks like it automatically pulls images from that folder, so if you add your own images it KNOWS, Though, my tests in adding additional images to widen the background selection has failed, you can totally replace the existing backgrounds with something  else.) 

 

 

SEE!     I just open one of the background PNGs (in this case I used the stain glass on) and load it into an image editor (in this case I used MS paint for windows 7) and BOOM     your own background

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Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

That's great news Landi. Thanks for pointing that out brother.

Reply #21 from Elemental Forums Top

I wonder if they'll have a "null" pose where the 3d unit isn't drawn at all so you can just use the background as the unit card image.  Perhaps too misleading, but it could be fun.  Of course, wouldn't work too well if the same pose is used on the map.

Reply #23 from Elemental Forums Top

Custom poses
Uh. Oh. Dare I ask your opinion on female units?!

Reply #24 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Scoutdog, reply 23

Custom poses Uh. Oh. Dare I ask your opinion on female units?!

Naked :)

lol

Reply #25 from Elemental Forums Top

Mind = Blown

If ever there was a case to be made for "It's the little things that count," this is it.

 

Super special awesome, indeed.